Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, December 2001, page 53

Special Report

 

Civil Liberties Jeopardized as Arabs, Muslims Find Themselves Caught in Web of Federal Investigations

 

By Roxane Assaf

When Rebecca Lewis and Mohamed Kadhri got married on Sept. 27, they had no idea that four days later they would be planning to leave the country. But it wasn’t the honeymoon they had in mind.

According to the newlyweds, Mohamed dropped Rebecca off at the Detroit airport, where she is an airline customer service agent. Thinking he had left his house keys with her, he left his car at the curb, with the hazard lights blinking, and ran to catch his wife before she made her way through security. But he was too late; she was gone.

Then, to his relief, Mohamed discovered the house keys in his pocket.

Returning to his car, however, his relief began to subside as he found a uniformed police officer examining the vehicle. Attempting to avoid a ticket, Mohamed explained to the officer that he was just about to leave. “He looked at me like I scared him,” said Mohamed in his soft Tunisian-accented English. “I said, ‘I’m sorry. I’m going home now. I’m gonna leave right now.’”

The officer was not finished, however. He asked Mohamed for his license. Checking it, he then asked for proof that Mohamed was using his real name. Mohamed showed an ID. The officer asked if he was a U.S. citizen. Mohamed replied, “No.”

“Green card?”

“No.”

The officer then took the car keys away, Mohamed said, and ordered him to sit in the car. While Mohamed sat for 20 minutes, the police officer used his walkie-talkie to call an Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) agent. When the agent arrived, Mohamed was ordered out of the car. The government official identified himself as an INS agent and referred to the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington. “I have nothing to do with that,” said Mohamed.

“Your name is Mohamed?” asked the agent.

“Yes,” Mohamed answered.

“Are you sure this is your name?”

“Yes.”

“You’re a Muslim?”

“Yes.”

The agent then asked Mohamed if he could check his pockets. Mohamed complied. The agent checked Mohamed’s pockets and asked him to turn around. When he did so, Mohamed found himself being handcuffed so tightly he pleaded with the agent to loosen the cuffs. “‘You’ll be alright,’ he told me,” said Mohamed. The agent then told him to sit on the ground.

 

The USA PATRIOT bill “puts people in fear just when the FBI needs cooperation.”

It is exactly this kind of scenario that American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is working to prevent. Prior to Oct. 26, when President George Bush signed HR3162, dubbed the “USA PATRIOT Act” (Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing the Appropriate Tools Required To Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism), the ACLU had warned Congress that the new provisions would lead to abuses by the attorney general and federal law enforcement officials granted new permanent powers. The bill passed almost unanimously, however—even though, according to the ACLU, many legislators could not have had the chance even to read the modified bill because of anthrax-related building closures.

Tim Edgar, legal counsel at the ACLU office in Washington, DC, believes the legislation “puts people in fear just when the FBI needs cooperation. It isn’t productive, and it’s going to instill a lot of mistrust for a long time.”

Areas such as Detroit, Edgar added, where great numbers of Arabs live, would undoubtedly be targeted for investigation.

The ACLU’s list of concerns includes the rights of non-citizens who are found to be in violation of immigration rules, such as overstaying a visa. Ordinarily, these individuals would not be deportable for terrorism. Under the new laws, however, they could be subjected to detention—possibly indefinite—on the attorney general’s finding of “reasonable grounds to believe” they are involved in terrorism or in any activity that poses a danger to national security or the safety of the community or any person.

Michigan Sen. Carl Levin, who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee, applauded the signing of the USA PATRIOT bill. Having led a three-year effort to strengthen laws against money laundering, Levin had authored those provisions of the bill designed to make it harder for terrorists and other criminals to access U.S. banks. The new legislation also authorizes $50 million each to the INS and the U.S. Customs Service for technological improvements and additional equipment along Michigan’s northern border. In addition, the law triples the authorized number of border patrol, Customs Service and INS inspectors monitoring the northern border.

In the House, Minority Whip David Bonior, who represents Michigan’s 10th Congressional District, voted against the bill. According to press secretary Cody Harris, Bonior “felt the issues of civil liberties had not been adequately discussed. It was rushed, and it needed work.”

Indeed it was signed into law in near-record time, with only one public hearing, little debate and with phases of its drafting done in wee-hour dealings. “Now,” said Harris, “the idea is to monitor things step-by-step.”

In June of this year, Bonior received the “Distinguished Commitment to Civil Rights Award” from the Washington, DC-based American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) in recognition of his efforts as the lead sponsor of legislation to repeal the use of secret evidence. The Michigan Democrat also has put pressure on the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to eliminate profiling and, since the Gulf war, has called attention to the humanitarian crisis in Iraq.

 

The Ordeal Continues

Meanwhile, back in Detroit, as Mohamed Kadhri sat on the ground outside the airport, the INS agent and police officer waited for an FBI agent to arrive with his wife, Rebecca. “I felt like nothing,” remembers Mohamed, “like an animal, not a person.”

“Is your wife an American citizen?” the INS agent had asked him.

“Yes,” Mohamed replied.

“Did you file for your Green Card?”

“Yes. I have the papers at home. I’m clean,” Mohamed said.

“I’m sure you’re not clean,” the agent responded, “and I have a feeling I’m going to find out something about you.

“And guess what?” he continued. “If you file, I can cancel it for you!”

When Rebecca arrived with the FBI agent, the INS man asked her, “Are you sure who you’re married to? Did he change his passport? Are you sure this is his name?”

Rebecca replied that yes, she was sure.

Further tormenting the couple, a security officer arrive with a sniffing dog, and the INS agent said to Mohamed, “You know you’re going to pay for all this service.”

“I believed him,” Mohamed said. “He told me it would cost $1,500. I have no money.”

A police truck came and Mohamed was put in the back seat. When Rebecca tried to calm him, the INS agent said to the officer driving the truck, “Just go. It’s his wife. She’s worried about him.”

When the driver responded that it was natural for a wife to be concerned under such circumstances, Mohamed recalled, he felt less lonely.

The INS agent offered his own version of reassurance when Rebecca’s sister arrived with the immigration papers to prove Mohamed’s pending status. The agent told Mohamed’s sister-in-law not to worry, that everything would be okay for her. “This is security against illegal aliens like him, not you,” he said.

Mohamed was taken to the airport’s immigration office. The same agent led him into a small room and said, “This is your suite. You’ll have everything you need here.” He then removed the handcuffs and left Mohamed alone for more than an hour.

Another INS official eventually arrived and asked a battery of questions to which Mohamed replied in the negative, including whether Mohamed had been to California or New York or had ever been arrested or spent time in jail.

The agent then offered Mohamed a choice: Leave the country within 30 days or appear before a judge. When Mohamed asked for advice, the agent said he didn’t know anything except that, if Mohamed chose to see a judge, he would have to stay in his “suite” for two days.

“I couldn’t stay there!” Mohamed said afterward. “There was nothing. No furniture, no window, just white walls, white floor, white light. I would go crazy. So, I said I will leave in 30 days.”

The Arab Community Center for Economic and Social Services (ACCESS) is a Detroit-area human service organization providing support to the nation’s largest concentration of Arabs. Its immigration specialist, George Saba, is experienced in matters of residency and citizenship. “The INS has a point when they arrest some of them,” Saba told the Washington Report. “I understand the law, and I advise people to follow the INS rules. But now they’re picking people up right and left for being out of status, and there’s no leniency. Usually they allow them to file for adjustments to their status. Not now. Mohamed Kadhri has to go back to Tunisia and wait for his status to come through.”

 

Two Tiers of Justice

Nasser Beydoun, executive director of Detroit’s American Arab Chamber of Commerce, has less confidence in the system. Beydoun foresees a definite worsening of the quality of life for Arabs and Muslims. “There are two tiers of justice now: one for immigrants, and one for citizens. If you are an immigrant, you have no more civil liberties in this country.

“Immigration [the INS], for its part, has never been good at dealing with people,” he continued. “Especially now, you’re going to see a lot of abuse of power. Nationwide, 1,800 people have been rounded up, and nobody knows where they are. They’re being picked up on visa violations.”

In Beydoun’s opinion, the most important and overlooked fact is that “none of the terrorists were immigrants.”

Acting on Saba’s suggestion, the Kadhris, along with Rebecca’s parents, went to the INS to check on the status of their file and to request an extension on the order for Mohamed to leave. Waiting from 7:30 a.m. in a room filled with people from countries around the world, the family was surprised when a woman called into the crowd, “Mohamed! You! She’s a citizen; you’re not. We don’t have your file, and we don’t care.”

The Kadhris were further surprised that a woman of Hispanic origin would treat an immigrant this way, and chagrined that everyone in the waiting room witnessed the scene. Mohamed then held up a receipt for a $450 money order. “I don’t care,” the INS worker said. “And don’t tell me she’s pregnant. Also, don’t tell me you want to meet the judge, because he’s going to laugh at you.”

Rebecca began to cry, as did her parents. Mohamed was utterly dismayed. Meanwhile, another INS employee, who had heard the denial of Mohamed’s extension request, encouraged them not to give up.

And it does seem that there is reason for hope, even in the face of bureaucratic adversity. In mid-October Detroit’s Arab community and its heavily Arab suburb of Dearborn had a brush with defamation which ultimately led to an apology from the Michigan State Police. After the Detroit News published an article citing a House subcommittee finding that “374 potential threat elements” in Michigan in fact resided in southeast Michigan, it seemed that Dearborn was being labeled as a “hotbed of sleeping terrorists,” according to ADC Midwest regional director Imad Hamad.

When questioned, FBI officials said they were unaware of the report, and claimed they had never been consulted. The Michigan State Police said its report was compiled from FBI public domain information and other sources, but had never been intended to incriminate the Dearborn community.

In spite of the disclaimer, the next issue of Newsweek magazine focused on southeast Michigan, and Dearborn in particular, implying they were rich breeding grounds for terror. In response to the Newsweek article, the Detroit FBI office issued a statement that “the FBI does not support any conclusion that any particular community, ethnic, or religious group is more prone to support terrorism than any other.”

Finally, the director of the Michigan State Police and Michigan’s director of Homeland Security, Col. Michael Robinson, called a meeting with area Arab-American leaders and made an official statement, saying the report was misinterpreted. “The inference that these potential threat elements are all groups of individuals with ties to the Arab-American community is completely inaccurate,” said Robinson. “Any reports that the Dearborn community or any other community in southeast Michigan is any more prone to harbor terrorist elements is also unfair, inaccurate, and irresponsible.”

As it turns out, the data for the report were collected from Michigan’s 97 counties, and the “374 potential threat elements” comprised a mélange of groups not limited to Arabs or Muslims. The summary of threat elements, in fact, includes groups known to pose potential danger to Arabs and Muslims. In the end, said Hamad, “We were able to contain the damage, but we were put in a position in which we don’t need to be in the first place.”

Rebecca and Mohamed Kadhri feel the same way. Although the days after their trauma at the airport and public humiliation at the INS office brought about an apology from the supervisor and an extension for Mohamed to Jan. 2, 2002, they still wonder how they could have found themselves in such an unexpected and disheartening predicament.

Others detained in the future, moreover, may be even less “lucky.” On Nov. 8 the Justice Department announced that it had approved—effective immediately and without the usual waiting period for public comment—an emergency rule allowing it to eavesdrop on conversations between attorneys and their clients in federal custody.

ACLU official Laura Murphy described the abolishment of the right to attorney-client privilege as “a terrifying precedent.”

The same day, the Justice Department announced it no longer would issue a running total of the number of people being detained nationwide as part of the investigation into the Sept. 11 attacks.

Mohamed Kadhri may look back on his ordeal and thank his lucky stars it happened before the noose tightened irrevocably.

Roxane Assaf is a free-lance writer based in Chicago.

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